


Journey to the Southwest

by fresne



Category: Native American/First Nations Mythology, Xī yóu jì | Journey to the West - Wú Cheng'en
Genre: Chromatic Character, Chromatic Source, Chromatic Yuletide, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:35:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They continued to journey west until they came to a wide green river where the cypress grew thick. The cicadas hummed in the trees and in the still hot air, the Song of the South was sung.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lnhammer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnhammer/gifts).



> The following inspiration for this work and inspiration for my dialogue, where I am not directly quoting, because apt quotes are cool:  
> Journey to the West  
> Song of the South

The journey through the air was pleasant. The clouds were soft to sleep upon.

The wind tickled at Sun Wukong's fur and made it stand up on end. Once, as he jumped over Sha Wujing in a cloud somersault, he almost lost the Will-following, Golden-banded staff from where he kept it tucked behind his ear. It tumbled from its place and thinking to make it easier to catch, he had it grow to its full size. But it tumbled through his fingers and struck the sea a mighty blow.

Fortunately, since the Dragon King of the Sea never wanted to see again what he had lost to Sun Wukong's tricks, an island grew up out of the sea and pushed it back toward Sun Wukong's feet. But this was not the story of that island.

This was the story of what came after that. The travelers continued on their journey. Xuanzang rode on Yulong Santaizi's back. Sha Wujing swam through the great sea below. Sun Wukong and Xhu Bajie ran beside Xuanzang through the sky.

Finally, they reached the farther shore and touched down to the ground as lightly as a breeze.

The companions kept going. As they went, spring upon further decision shook out her dress and became summer as soft as a gossamer of silk and as heavy with heat as a man’s eye after a great feast.

They came to a mighty river of gray, green, brown, wide water. Along the river banks, the cypress trees knelt in long stands as if they were maidens serenely taking their baths with their cloaking leaves to hide them and the water discretely covering their lower trunks.

Great spreading oaks with their green thick branches were hung with beards of tangled light green moss. Along the river banks, there were short houses made of wood slats with porches that reached out over the water. Old men gathered on their porches and played softly upon stringed instruments.

From the trees, mockingbirds called a thousand melodies. Sun Wukong, who was the master of the seventy-two methods of earthly transformation, became a mockingbird and he called to them in turn.

He perched on a branch and tilted his mocking head until Xuanzang called to him, "Come down from there. We must keep going along this river."

They walked along the river bank.

Sun Wukong sat on the edge of the river where the reeds were thick and looked into the water. Terrapins swam silent under the stream. There was a splash. A great fish slurped down Xhu Bajie's snout. He chewed and swallowed. "Delicious."

They came to where there was a briar patch over which bees hummed and circled. In the oak trees, cicadas strummed their melody. In the thick heat of the day, like syrup from sugar, not a leaf stirred and there was no wind to ride over the river. They could have jumped or swam, but the day invited a slow walk as they listened to the Song of the South in the stillness.

They walked along the road, until they saw a small figure shaped like a man and pitch black all over sitting on a rocking chair.

Xuanzang said, "Sun Wukong, go over there and ask him," he held his finger up under Sun Wukong's entirely innocent nose, "politely, if there is a place where we can take our bowls before the people and beg for food."

Xhu Bajie’s ears perked up. “Food!”

But Xuanzang said, “Sun Wukong should go.” They companions withdrew to the river’s edge. That way they would not to overwhelm the little creature on his chair.

Sun Wukong puffed out his chest. He swaggered and his long tail made a happy curve in the heavy air. He bowed to the figure on the rocking chair. “Greetings, honored gentlemen, can you tell me where devout travelers can put out our bowls and beg for food?”

The figure on the chair said nothing.

Thinking to himself that perhaps the creature was deaf, Sun Wukong got closer. He yelled, “Hey, honored gentleman, where can we beg for food?”

The figure on the chair said nothing.

Sun Wukong came closer. He saw that the figure had a little piece of cooked yam in his hand. He thought to himself, “It would be a very noble thing to bring back Xuanzang some yam. And clearly this creature is both deaf and asleep and will never know the difference. Why that piece of yam might drop to the ground while he slept and it would be all the same. In fact, I am saving that piece of yam from that very fate.” He reached down very delicately and took hold of the yam. But his paw brushed against the creature, which clung to him.

He yelled, “Let go immediately.” He was very angry now that this creature would dare take hold of him. He struck the creature square in the face with a blow that could have shook a mountain. The chair rocked back and they both tumbled back into the dust of the road. Sun Wukong’s fist went in, but the creature clung around his fist and as much as he shook, he could not get free. He kicked at the creature and found his leg caught. He screamed an obscenity best not repeated here. He jumped a cloud-jump leap in the air and twisted and turned and when he landed it was with no grace, but in a thump on the ground. He had no control. Not even his tail was inside of the creature, which he now realized was a figure made from tar. He rolled down the side of the road into a ditch. He rolled up against a rabbit trapped inside another ball of tar.

The rabbit said, “Well, aren’t you all wrapped up like a coon in a honey pot.”

Sun Wukong transformed himself into a rabbit to see if that would help. It did not. He sighed and was a monkey again. “You are in no better condition.” He paused. “What is a coon?” Because even all wrapped up and stuck to a stranger in a ditch, he was very curious. Then remembering that Xuanzang told him to be polite, he said, “Greetings, I am Sun Wukong.”

The rabbit said, “Hey now, where have my manners gone to. I’m Briar Rabbit. I live in that there briar patch yonder up the road. How do you do?”

Sun Wukong shrugged inside the tar that trapped him. “I am the master of all seventy-two earthly transformations and can pluck hairs from my furnace hardened body to make what I will.” He had decided to be modest and not mention his other skills.

Briar Rabbit struggled briefly to turn around and get a better look at Sun Wukong. “Well, now, don’t you sound like a useful fellow to have around.”

Sun Wukong preened, because he was a very useful fellow to have around. He felt a feeling of warm affection for Briar Rabbit and decided to forgive him for being stuck to him by a clump of tar.

Briar Rabbit twitched his ear. “Don’t suppose you could turn yourself into a slippery salamander and slide your way on out.”

Sun Wukong puffed up his chest. “I can and I will.” He turned himself into a slippery salamander. But as slippery as he was, he was not slippery enough. He became a monkey again. He said, “I think I will try being an elephant.” He became an elephant and the tar stretched around him.

“Change back, change back,” said Briar Rabbit, who was under Sun Wukong. “Gotta say, you’re a powerful big boy when you’re shaped like that.”

This was true. Sun Wukong tried several shapes, but none of them were quite right.

They lay there exhausted. Briar Rabbit said, “I’d call this a pretty pickle of a problem.”

“I like sour pickles,” said Sun Wukong, who wished he could kick the ground right now.

Just then, a fox ambled down the side of the ditch. He clapped his paws together and said, “Well, look at what I’ve got here. Two tasty treats caught in my trap. Now I just have to decide how to gobble you up.”

Before Sun Wukong had a chance to say that the Fox was welcome to try, Briar Rabbit said in a very loud voice, “What a relief. It’s just Briar Fox come to eat us up. I was just telling my friend here that I was worried that something was fixing to throw us into that there briar patch. But if you’re just gonna eat us, well, that’s all right then.”

Sun Wukong narrowed his eyes, because Briar Rabbit had said no such thing.

Briar Fox put his paws to his face as if thinking about this. “What are you on about?”

“Oh, I’m powerfully scared of that briar patch with its prickly thorns.” Briar Rabbit elbowed Sun Wukong through the tar. Sun Wukong’s eyes went wide with thought. “I’d much rather be thrown in a nice hot pot.”

But Briar Fox wasn’t quite ready to accept this idea. He said, “Really?”

Sun Wukong scoffed. “This fox may be clever, but look at him. I do not think he’s strong enough to throw us in the briar patch.”

Briar Fox’s ears twitched back. “I’m plenty strong enough to throw a couple of little fellows like you.”

Sun Wukong sighed. “It’s a shame, because our taste might be improved if we were first rolled in delicious berries.” He wondered if he should stop there, but it seemed apt, so he said, “Happiness is acceptance of what is beyond our capabilities.” He was glad that Zhu Bajie was not there as he might have done himself an injury listening to those words come out of Sun Wukong’s mouth.

Briar Fox said, “That does it.” He rolled them up the hill. The whole time, Briar Rabbit said, “Please, please, anything but the briar patch.” Into the briar patch they went.

The brier thorns scraped off the tar, which was painful, but Sun Wukong supposed that Xuanzang would say there was a lesson there.

The thorns were too tight for the Briar Fox to get into the briar patch. He yelled, “You may think you’ve made a fool out of me, but you haven’t.”

“Fools is as make themselves,” said Briar Rabbit, which struck Sun Wukong as wise thing.

Sun Wukong said, “Do you know of a place where my companions and I can go with our bowls to beg for food?”

Briar Rabbit laughed. “Why beg. It’s summer time and there’s food hanging all over for free.” Sun Wukong followed Briar Rabbit through the briar patch where they gathered good food. They went back to where his companions waited.

They spent some time with Briar Rabbit there along the great river bank. When it was time to go, Briar Rabbit said, “I’ve always had a hankering to see what was far away. Don’t suppose you’ve got room for one more in your party?”

They did have room. So it was that that Briar Rabbit came with them as they journeyed into the deserts that lay west of the great river.

Now the adventure that they had with the Wily Coyote on the way past the red Thunderbird mountain was a completely different tale.


	2. The Tale of the Adventure on Thunderbird Mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tale of how Wily Coyote lost a part of his body that he was rather fond of, and how he got it back with some help from Br'er Rabbit and Sun Wukong. Or Wily Coyote and Wise Sage Coyote don't exactly mean the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since lnhammer stamped foot in the comments to emphasize that someone had to write the story of the travelers meeting Wily Coyote and the adventure at Thunderbird mountain, someone has. Mind you now, it may not quite be the expected adventure. Some warnings for content (see the first sentence of the story) because for some reason as soon as I saw the comment, that was the remark Wily Coyote made in my head. So, not quite stylistically the same. But hopefully pleasing.
> 
> Also, fair warning, this is the kind of story that if I do keep adding to it as ideas strike, will always end on a, "And then..."

Wily Coyote had lost his penis. He couldn't find it anywhere.

He'd looked for it under the dusty green sage brush that clumped and snarled along the dusty banks of the Summer Dead River. He'd looked for it in the middle of the wide Flat Dust lakes that spread like pounded flat bread under the dusty red mountains. He'd even looked for it in the middle of a tumbling tumbleweed, but it wasn't there.

He asked the tumbleweed to ask anyone it met to find if him if they found his penis.

He let the tumbleweed go and the wind picked it and carried it into the sky, which was of little good to Wily Coyote. He could see clear as the sun in the sky that his penis wasn't anywhere up there. There wasn't a cloud far as the eye could see, which meant the Thunderbirds were sleeping off that last summer storm. He grumbled about useless tumbleweeds and went to look on the top of Red Butte bluff.

He'd just checked under the Sleeping Man rock, which had once been a man who'd only wanted to nap, when there was a loud thump and red dust went everywhere. A man dressed in as bright an orange an outfit as anyone could wish, if that person wanted to get eaten by Wolf or Cougar, rode his horse right down out of the sky and landed on the butte. He was quickly followed by a feral pig sort of fellow, a demon, a rabbit, and in a triple summersault flourish, a little furry man.

The bright orange man said, "Greetings, good sir." He held up the tumbleweed. "We found this tumbling through the sky and heard of your plight." Then he got down to the business of introducing himself and his friends to Wily Coyote.

The feral pig fellow, Xhu Bajie, interrupted the Orange Man, Xuanzang, at one point and said in a high pitched squeal, "Why would you *ever* want to remove your penis? It's your penis! It's your manhood! It's the fountain of your ever delighting..."

"That’s enough," said Xuanzang in a tone that said clear at the nose on Wily Coyote's head who was in charge, which explained the bright orange. Probably had the demon, Sha Wujing, eat whatever tried to eat him.

Wily Coyote contemplatively licked his balls, which thankfully he hadn't lost at the same time as his penis, because finding them was even worse. "Well," he licked some more, "there are times when it can be awful useful to remove it for having fun."

Now Xuanzang was looking like he'd swallowed a prickly pear and the prickly pear cactus besides, but Sun Wokong, who was a monkey king and sure enough Wily Coyote had never met one of those, jumped up and down. "We've come to offer our help, Wise Sage Coyote, and to learn whatever teachings we can from you."

It occurred to Wily Coyote that perhaps sending a message by tumbleweed lost a bit in translation. But he wasn't about to turn down help. He said, "I do appreciate your offer, but seems like putting you all out on such a little thing wouldn't be polite, but if one or two of you wanted to help, I wouldn't turn you down."

So it was that Coyote led the party to the valley where Lost Empty Dust City perched in the yellow cliff face. Down by the Summer Wet River, the willows grew right and tight up to the river’s edge. Sha Wujing, Xuanzang, Xhu Bajie, and Yulong Santiaizi took their ease from the sun's heat under the trees by the pool where the river rocks glittered like gold, but weren't. Wily Coyote may have mumbled, "Now whatever you do, don't go up to the Lost Empty Dust City up yonder." But since he was in such a rush, he couldn't be sure.

In any case, Br'er Rabbit and Sun Wukong came on looking with him. They looked over by the Reflecting Sound Gorge, but all they found was their voices thrown right back at them. They went down into the gorge to where the yellow rocks turn orange, but it wasn't in the White Rush River and it wasn't inside the burnt out trunk of the Old Fire Black Tree.  
Finally, Wily Coyote said, "The only place left where I can think to look is up on the Red Fire mountain where the Red-Eyed Thunderbird nests. I could have left it there." He shuddered. "But a Thunderbird is an awful dangerous sort of creature. They make clouds from their wings and sheet lighting comes out their eyes when they blink. They've got two rainbow colored horns coming out of their beaks and they surround themselves with serpents that make bolt lightening."

"I'd think you'd have a powerful strong memory of the occasion if you took your penis off in a place like that," said Br'er Rabbit, who thumped the ground with one long foot to emphasize his point.

"Let's go," said Sun Wukong, standing on his head with his feet kind of kicking at the sky. "I've never seen a Thunderbird."

So they climbed up Red Fire Mountain where Red-Eyed Thunderbird had her nest.  
Every few feet, as the trail switch backed its way up over the red rocks, Wily Coyote would tell them a little bit more about Thunderbirds. Until Sun Wukong said in a loud voice, "You are a very brave creature indeed to remove your penis in the nest of such a bird."  
Br'er Rabbit muttered, "Or a damn fool."  
As it was, Red-Eyed Thunderbird blinked when she saw them come into her nest and heat lightening tumbled down the hillside. "You! I told you what would happen if you came back here!"

"I know. I know." Wily Coyote licked his left leg at the memory. "We were just coming to look for some property of mine that I might have left here. It's awful precious to me."

Sun Wukong did a cartwheel right up to Red-Eyed Thunderbird and swung off on her horns. "It's his penis. He's lost it and we're helping him find it."

Red-Eyed Thunderbird shook him off and flew backwards to perch over them on the edge of her nest, which was typical of her in Wily Coyote's opinion. "I don't know what you boys think your planning on doing with that little thing, but you're not looking for it in my nest."

Sun Wukong jumped up to where Red-Eyed Thunderbird perched. He puffed up his chest and grinned. "We must insist, Red-Eyed Thunderbird."

Red-Eyed Thunderbird flapped her wings at this and clouds gathered around the Red Flame Mountain. She blinked and sheet lightening cascaded down the craggy mountain side. The serpents in her nest woke up and hissed bolt lightening into the sky.

"Well now, by insist we mean, and hey now, where are my manners. How do you do?" Br'er Rabbit fluffed his fur and bowed to Thunderbird. "A pleasure to meet such a distinguished lady such as yourself. Now, I'm thinking that such a fine lady as you ain't gonna want something nasty," he wrinkled his nose, which had become very pink, "like that lying around where her chicks might start to playing with it."

Red-Eyed Thunderbird looked less like killing them all. "They are supposed to visit soon."

"Well, then we'd just best start looking so we can get out of your pretty feathers." Br'er Rabbit tilted his head and Wily Coyote would have given his left ball to have looked as fluffy and wide eyed as Br'er Rabbit looked in that moment. It was not fair, because Red-Eyed Thunderbird actually giggled, which carried a whole mountain load of horrible with it. It turned out that when she giggled, the sky snowed fine white sharp snowflakes.

But they set to looking. Or rather, Sun Wukong and Wily Coyote set to looking through the nest full of wriggling lightening snakes, while Thunderbird made Br'er Rabbit nettle tea and gave him freshly baked maize cakes with dried berries to eat.

Wily Coyote distinctly heard Thunderbird giggle over a complement from Br'er Rabbit. Brittle snow fell, which had the lightening snakes hissing like a pile of lightening in a brittle snowstorm.  
They looked all over that nest and under those snakes, but when they were done, they still hadn't found Wily Coyote's penis.

It was with heavy steps that Wily Coyote led them back to his burrow under the Rainbow Sand desert. Where what do you know, his penis was next to his bed. He put it on with a happy sigh and licked it for good measure. When he was done, he said, "Sorry for putting you out like that."

Sun Wukong shrugged. "It was a most enjoyable diversion. I just wish I'd had a chance to prove myself against the Thunderbird."

"She made a mighty fine nettle tea," said Br'er Rabbit. He rubbed his belly. Wily Coyote considered just how plump Br'er Rabbit was looking.

In any case, they went back to the valley below Lost Empty Dust City, but strangely enough there wasn't no one there. Not down in the Willow Grove. Not in the pool that glittered like gold, but wasn't.

Br'er Rabbit said, "I'm beginning to think they're on the ground next to your bed."

Sun Wukong pointed up at where the Lost Empty Dust City. "Could they be up there?"

Wily Coyote nipped his own shoulder. He said, "They could be, but that's a powerful dangerous place. Since you fellows were so kind as to help me, let me help you." Now he might more accurately have said, "Let me come along so I can better fuck with you," but Wily Coyote had never found that that worked as well for getting people to let him come along.

So they went on up into where the Lost Empty Dust City perched in the yellow cliff face. Now the adventure that they had there, that was another tale.

**Author's Note:**

> From the Journey...
> 
> The spreading live-oaks,  
> The cypress knees.  
> The spreading live-oaks hung with moss beards  
> Like old men gathered upon a front porch.  
> The cypress knees rise up from the water  
> As if the trees are bathing on the banks.  
> The mockingbirds trill a thousand calls,  
> The terrapins swim silent under the stream.  
> Beneath the magnolias cicadas chirr,  
> Above the briar-patch bees are circling.  
> In the lazy heat not a leaf is stirring:  
> The Song of the South is heard in stillness.
> 
> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
